Australia around a century ago was considered a “working man’s paradise”. (Yes, the women didn’t do so well, but not as badly as they’re going to do now …)
From the Sydney Morning Herald:

The tough penalties, largely overlooked in the week’s legislative frenzy, dovetail nicely with the new industrial relations regime. Workers who quit over poor conditions – a workplace agreement that strips them of all but the Government’s five new minimum standards, for example – will end up penniless. Ditto for workers sacked for alleged misconduct, with no right to appeal under unfair dismissal laws. And those who would like Christmas Day off, or to be paid penalties for the graveyard shift, will think twice about rejecting a job that provides neither.
If the alternative is no money for eight weeks, no right to an unemployment benefit, then many will become compliant wage slaves in the new industrial order.

Note to the SMH – please! stop splitting all stories into two pages. Yes it might get up your click count, but it is intensely irritating.

* The “out of Africa” thesis of human evolution is, it seems, if not dead, then certainly in need of substantial modification. This report is quite technical, but well worth wrestling with. And if supported by further evidence, it means a total rethink about our origins. We’re all both African, and Chinese.

* David Mamet’s theory of how to write a play, via a heavy critique of The Night of the Iguana.

* The Guardian looks at whatever happened to the end of hereditary peers. Short answer: Tony Blair has left them there because he doesn’t have the guts to face the issue.

I’ve got a solution to solve the elected versus appointed conundrum – select members of the House of Lords by lot. (All citizens over the age of 18 included – and paid a reasonable sum for participation.) It has a perfect democratic pedigree (ancient Athens and all that), and would reproduce the delightful dottiness and eccentricity of the old Lords, combined with a dogged commonsense to restrict the Commons’ wilder flights of fancy.

I’ve been reading about crime and punishment in 13th-century England, and wondering what has changed. In cases of rape, juries were reluctant to convict, often cases were withdrawn, and if the woman got pregnant medical belief of the time (and for some time afterwards) held this to be conclusive evidence that it could not have been rape.

Before 1275 it wasn’t even the Crown’s duty to prosecute, and the victim had to seek her own recompense in the courts, if she could.

So one can’t but cheer Sybel Climne, who was walking home late one night by the light of the moon in 1312 through the alleys of Great Yarmouth. When a man jumped out and tightened her hood around her neck, trying to strangle her into submission, she pulled out a small knife and stabbed him in the stomach, killing him instantly. She even had a witness to testify to what had happened. (Although, I read, witnesses to the defence were not sworn and may not have been legally taken into account.)

The jurors couldn’t at this stage, however, give a verdict of “not guilty”; all they could do is recommend the king pardon her for killing in self-defence (se defendendo). The source doesn’t say if she got her pardon, but you’d hope so.

But you do have to wonder about the coroner’s verdict in the case of Agnes Tuppel of Wiltshire, who struck a six-month-old-boy, “William, son of Michael the vintner”, with an axe. The verdict? Misadventure.

From R.J. Sims, “Secondary offenders? English woman and crime 1220-1348” in Studies on Medieval and Early Modern Women 4: Victims or Viragos, pp. 69-88.

London’s answer to the Arc de Triomphe, the outside entrance to Buckingham Palace, a source of controversy and scandal – all of those are or have been among the roles of Wellington Arch (also known as Constitution Arch), which stands today at an odd angle opposite Apsley House, amidst a raceway of roads. (Something for London’s mayor Ken Livingstone to sort out soon, you’d have to hope.)

So is it worth the £3 entry fee (or less with a combined ticket for Apsley House)? I’d say it was. There’s a lovely view from its balcony of the surrounding area – down to the House of Commons and the London Eye, up to the green stretchs of Hyde Park, and a close-up view of the bronze quadriga (four-horse chariot), which was lovingly crafted by a man with a detailed knowledge of equine anatomy. READ MORE

There’s something odd going on, when it is the House of Lords, full of party placemen and hereditary aristocrats, that is protecting human rights in asserting evidence obtained by torture should not be used. And the the Tories look much greener than the Labour Party. (Yes it is easy to “look” things in opposition, I agree, but still Tony Blair barely even pays lip-service to environmental issues, and his government policies are even worse.)

Does left/right mean anything any more?

Frances Williams Wynn is today making a second visit to the Caledonian Church in Hatton Garden, and finding the Rev David Irving, isn’t sounding quite so good the second time around.

And for those who think 19th-century churchgoing would have been a decorous business, there’s also an awakening:

Even when one did not hear some voices crying for mercy and others for silence, the crowd pressed against the pew till they made every board creak, and kept one in continual apprehension that at last they would give way. During the last hour of the oration the people were more quiet; some servants, who I believe came for the fun of pushing about, were turned out, and we heard better.